Blood Drug Testing

Can cancer be detected by having a blood test?

Why is it that doctors do a biopsy on a particular area. Can't they determine if someone has cancer by giving you a blood test? I would be a lot less painful and if it's not cancer you wouldn't have a scoop of your skin missing and always be touching it with your tongue if the biopsy was done inside your mouth. Can anyone answer this? This would be really great if there are nurses or other professionals that could help with this question. A blood test instead of a biopsy. Why didn't someone think of that before?

Public Comments

1. Some types of cancer ARE detectably by blood draws...some are not. It depends upon the type. It sounds like you're concerned with oral cancer, and maybe this type of condition doesn't show up easily for blood analysis. Biopsies don't have to be a chunk taken out....often they can be done by inserting a syringe (needle) into the lump (called a needle biopsy) and drawing out some of the tissue for pathology. If it turns out that you have some sort of growth that needs to go, then the biopsy would happen then (called a lumpectomy). If your doctor suspects that you have a dangerous condition, just do as he/she says...it might save your life!
2. A biopsy is much more conclusive than a blood test. You have to be able to look at the potentially cancerous cells, not just check for a hormone level or something. In order to look at the cells, you have to cut them out.
3. No , limited type of cancers can be detected by a simple blood test , the vast majority of them require more sophisticated investigations , also the former cancers (those which was detected by a simple blood test) need further investigations for confirmation . You know , starting an aggressive treatment strategy for a lesion need a reliable and accurate background . e.g, you can imagine that we are going to perform laryngectomy operation for a patient! (resection of larynx) , we can anticipate laryngeal cancer in 99% of the time with only gross appearance , but it could be a fungal disease (less than 1%) or . . . that is curable with oral antifungal . . . So , if we perform this aggressive operation in a patient with inflammatory disease , the patient will loss his/her voice without any indications! . So , biopsy is 100% necessary for all suspected lesions .
4. A blood test will show if your normal levels of your white blood cell and lymphocytes are out of whack. It can detect changes in your blood but it cant tell you what kind of cancer or where it came from. Usually a blood test will indicate that something is going on but it wont tell you exactly what when it comes to cancer.
5. They can give you a blood test to see if there is any cancer cells in the blood it don't always show up when the cancer travels to another place there is a test called pet that some what like a MRI that tells them where it has traveled to as in my case I have to have a blood test every three months the test did not show any thing wrong I was in the hospital they ran a pet test and found that the colon cancer had traveled to my lungs. As this shows they have to check with more than one way to be sure. As I was saying my blood test in April did not show any thing wrong but in June they ran the pet test and found I have two lumps in my right lung and one in my left I was glad they did the pet test even thou I now am given three months to two years to live I was told what ever treatment they might use would kill me faster than the cancer will. They have many things that can be done to detect if you have cancer a blood test is only one of them.